It's Monday morning.
We hurry to get ready and run out the door to work. We are lucky if we squeezed in a few minutes of prayer and reading our Bible before breakfast. Church--if we went--seems like a world away as we hit the ground running. The weekend and time with our family is over. Now, it's on to other things. Gotta get to work. Time to face today's to-do list. Unread e-mails blink waiting to be answered. We dive into a day of appointments, phone calls, meetings, and putting out fires. We are in a different zone now. We are at work.
Much of our Christianity today suffers because it has failed to bridge the divide between these compartmentalized worlds we live in. We develop dual modes of living. We have one set of software for the domestic life of church and home, and another for work. The problem is not that we are two-faced, but that we are double-minded. In the "God zone" of church and home we feed our soul, worship to catch a glimpse of God, connect with family and friends and give our time and money to advance His kingdom machine, the church.
Entering the "work zone", however, we put on a different thinking cap. We are now in the hard-ball world of making a buck. Time to produce. God is about as relevant to what we do Monday-to-Friday as a locker room prayer is to a football game. At best it helps foster good sportsmanship. The game, after all, is just a game and work is just work. What has God got to do with it? What I do 9 to 5 has nothing to do with anything remotely spiritual. It's just what I have to do. At least I try to play the work-game Christianly. But, fundamentally, the hard reality of my "work zone" has a different bottom line than the "God zone" of my life.
The spiritual disease behind this schizophrenic way of living begins in our view of God Himself. A holistic vision of one's life begins with a glimpse of the wholeness of God. A. W. Tozer in his Christian classic, Knowledge of the Holy, explained how God is one with Himself: "The harmony of His being is the result not of a perfect balance of his parts, but of the absence of parts." Tozer went on to write that, "All of God does all that God does. He does not divide himself to perform a work, but works in the total unity of his being." God sees your life as one piece because His life is one piece. He is involved in all we do and, therefore, he cannot divide our lives up the way we do. It would violate the unity of who He is. In His way of thinking there is no disconnect between Sunday and Monday.
We think the key to well-rounded living is a question of balance when really it is about an absence of parts. Does all of you do all that you do? Or do you divide yourself on Monday morning accepting a partition between your soul and your work? Such a distinction may feel Christian. It may even be promoted by what we hear is valued as "spiritual" at church. Ultimately, however, it is not Biblical or consistent with the character of God.
A WORK PRAYER
Lord, I wouldn't want to worship a divided God. You are the One, the Almighty, the Only True God. Yet divisive pressures and the catchword "balance" are all around me. You are undivided, and you made me undivided. Please help me to live and work undividedly. If that means I've got to make some changes, help me to face them and do them. Amen.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Why are our "work zones" actually "God zones"?
2. Does all of you do all that you do? Could it be that you need to give attention to reintegrating your life parts, including work, with each other? How can you do that?
This WorkLife SwitchTOOL was written by Dr. David Scott. David is a speaker, writer and consultant regarding faith and work. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Content edited and distributed by WorkLife.org for non-profit educational purposes
